Sky Fighters

CHAPTER 14

       The fireball torched the American flag hanging by the flagpole on the bow. But it never came closer than that. Overhead, the Musashi must have been planning the same final defense, but it was boarded before the self destruct bomb was triggered. Flaming wreckage sunk below the waves. I moved my ship closer to pick up any injured crew. There was not a sound besides the crackle of the fire and the crash of waves.

       I gazed with my mouth open as I passed thousands of burned bodies. One moved. I stopped the ship and someone threw a rope. They didn't grab it. I threw my hat and gun on the deck, backed up, and jumped over.

       I saw the person trying to paddle. I grabbed them with one hand and the rope in the other. The crew pulled us up to the deck. The person looked about sixteen. They had a white captain's uniform on. It looked almost like mine, except for an outlined patch with a red circle in the middle. The captain of the Yamato. I searched longer, but there wasn't anyone else. He was injured badly. He was laying on towels on the deck. He was bleeding and burned. Someone raised a gun to the person's head.

       "No." I said.

       "He's the enemy! He's hurt badly, kill him!"

       "No! He is a person. Just like us." I replied. I tied a towel around one of the cuts. It was about 14:00, But the clocks had stopped working when the bomb went off.

       "What was that bomb you fired at us?" I tried.

       The captain looked at me. "Eh-eh-E. Mm-m-M. Pp-p-P. EMP. N-new tech. He understood some English. But what was an EMP?

       Whatever it did, it disabled all of the ship's electricals. I looked up as I heard a loud whooshing sound. I saw as Deathbringer dropped some ladders down to us. Someone told me to climb up, they would take the ship to shore. I grabbed the first step and started up.

       It was an incredibly long ladder and took forever to climb. When I reached the top, Michael helped me up. He looked startled. I looked around to see if there was another ship appearing to attack. The only ones near were captured Japanese ships including the Musashi. Radios came in about captured ships. One was the Shimakaze. It was a destroyer. I looked back at Michael. He was looking for something.

       "Something wrong?" I asked.

       "Those B-24s didn't return. None. What if something happened to them? Whose idea was is to send ground attack bombers on this mission anyway?" He replied.

       "There is a big sky out there. They're probably on their way back." I looked out in his direction. The sun was low, about 16:00. I spotted some large silhouettes in the distance.

       "See? Look!" I responded. It dawned on me as I realized there were only three objects.

       I knew he was looking for the reflection of the silver lead plane with the girl pilot. Two were easily noticeable as dark green. The last one was harder to tell. Smoke came from the last one. The first two flew by. One was Witchcraft. Another was Destroyer. We looked and looked at the last plane until it was close enough to read the name on the dark green side. Raining Death.